New Bill Aims To Get Rid Of Paperless Voting Machines

[UCmeNdc]

It's unlikely that we can get this passed in 2018, but a Democratic majority could very well do this next year. Via Ars Technica:

A bipartisan group of six senators has introduced legislation that would take a huge step toward securing elections in the United States. Called the Secure Elections Act, the bill aims to eliminate insecure paperless voting machines from American elections while promoting routine audits that would dramatically reduce the danger of interference from foreign governments.

The legislation comes on the heels of the contentious 2016 election. Post-election investigation hasn't turned up any evidence that foreign governments actually altered any votes. However, we do know that Russians were probing American voting systems ahead of the 2016 election, laying groundwork for what could have become a direct attack on American democracy.

"With the 2018 elections just around the corner, Russia will be back to interfere again," said co-sponsor Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).


https://crooksandliars.com/2018/01/new-bill-aims-get-rid-paperless-voting

[Ms. Toad]

1. The Russian interference isn't in the voting booth

It is in winning hearts and minds (by hook, crook, and dirty tricks) in the lead up to the elections.

All of the documented invasion/attempted invasions were to the voting registration systems - which could be used to purge voters from the rolls, not to the voting machines (paper or otherwise). All of the paper trails in the world will do nothing if (1) we don't figure out how to break through the propaganda noise and (2) we can't keep voters registered to vote.

The focus of this bill is misguided, and not worth the political capital that could be better spent elsewhere (e.g. ensuring multiple walls between internet facing opportunities to register to vote & the state and local voter databases; abolishing discriminatory voter registration laws; ensuring that felons who have served their time are permitted to vote, etc.)

[leftieNanner]

7. I disagree

This bill is ostensibly about the Russians interfering, but it also addresses the potential for voting shenanigans from republicans. A paper trail can be audited and an honest recount is possible. We have 100% paper vote-by-mail in Oregon and I like it. Get rid of the electronic voting machines for ever!

[dchill]

8. Absolutely correct!

[RandomAccess]

9. That's not necessarily true, but EVEN IF IT WERE

I can assure you that Democrats have been "losing" elections they didn't really lose since at least 2000. The real problem in FL 2000 wasn't hanging chads, but rigged electronic scanners. And things have gotten worse and worse as time has worn on.

Virginia won LANDSLIDES with paper ballots this year. Yes, turnout was great, but I'm convinced that wasn't all there was to it.

Here's some food for thought, and this is just one example. There are thousands of examples - not all of them at the Presidential level - for nearly 2 decades now. The unverifiable, innately (purposely) hackable electronic voting machines (with "proprietary software" the mfgrs will NOT allow anyone to review ever for any reason, even suspected fraud) are a tremendous danger to our democracy:

PALMER: Rigged election: Donald Trump won every surprise swing state by the same 1% margin
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/rigged-election-donald-trump-won-every-surprise-swing-state-by-the-same-1-margin/118/

The most commonly posited explanation of Donald Trump’s shocking election victory was that every professional pollster in the nation – despite each working independently and using differing methodologies – somehow managed to overlook the same pockets of Trump voters in these states. If such pockets did exist, they would have existed in varying sizes in each of the four states, thus resulting in different sized wins in each.

Ask any statistician and they’ll tell you that a reasonable distribution of the results would have been Trump winning one of the states by one percent, won one of them by perhaps three percent, won one of them by two percent, lost one of them by one percent, or something along those lines. But instead the voting tallies looked startlingly different from any natural distribution. In fact they looked startlingly the same.

According to the New York Times, the voting results broke down like this: Trump won Florida by just over one percent of the vote. He also won Pennsylvania by just over one percent. He won Michigan by just under one percent. And he won Wisconsin by precisely one percent. That’s not how numbers tend to work in the real world.

On its own, this kind of suspiciously consistent numerical dispersion across the four states that decided the election would be something that could be written off as a mere fluke. But when you put it within the context of the numerous other ways in which the voting tallies make no mathematical sense, it points to the numbers having been rigged or altered.

Jon Ossoff didn't lose his election either.

Jon Ossoff, the Democratic newcomer who ran against Republican former Secretary of State Karen Handel, won the absentee vote 64% to 36%. That vote was conducted on paper ballots that were mailed in and scanned on optical scanners. Ossoff also won the early voting 51% to 49%. Those results closely mirror recent polls that had him ahead by 1-3 points. In the highest of those polls, he was ahead by 7% with 5% undecided and a 4% margin of error.

On Election Day, Handel pulled out a whopping 16 percent lead, for a crushing 58% to 42% division of the day’s votes. That means that all 5% of the undecided voters broke for Handel, the poll was off by its farthest estimate and another 3.5% of Ossoff’s voters switched sides into her camp. All this despite Ossoff’s intensive door-to-door ground offensive that Garland Favorito, who lives in the heart of the sixth district called the “most massive operation” he’s ever seen. Favorito is the founder of VoterGA, a nonpartisan election reform group. He said Handel had signs up, but her canvassing operation didn’t approach Ossoff’s.
http://www.nationalmemo.com/georgia-question-6th-district-election-results/

There's a reason, btw, that exit polls are used around the world to detect election fraud, and they were considered reliable here too UNTIL they started showing problems that were actually there but media didn't want to believe, so didn't. Now the problem is so bad that I actually heard a political pundit say during election night in Alabama, "Oh, exit polls -- always unreliable." NO, always quite reliable.

Ossoff's election results got challenged:

Lawsuit seeks to void Georgia congressional election results
July 4, 2017
Georgia’s electronic touchscreen voting system is so riddled with problems that the results of the most expensive House race in U.S. history should be tossed out and a new election held, according to a lawsuit filed by a government watchdog group and six Georgia voters.

The new lawsuit comes weeks after the publication of a classified National Security Agency report describing a sophisticated scheme, allegedly by Russian military intelligence, to infiltrate local U.S. elections systems using phishing emails.

The suit cites the work of private cybersecurity researcher Logan Lamb, who discovered last August that a misconfigured server had left Georgia’s 6.7 million voter records and other sensitive files exposed to hackers. The complaint also notes that seven months after Lamb made that discovery, another researcher was able to do the same.

A spokeswoman for Kemp did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. But in a column Sunday in USA Today, Kemp blamed the news media for developing "false narratives about Russian hacking and potential vulnerabilities in the system. The prevailing plot line is that states like Georgia can’t provide suitable security for elections."

Kemp asserted that states are doing enough to keep elections secure, and he said, "Anything to the contrary is fake news."

Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, said the lawsuit was filed hours ahead of a deadline at midnight Monday to contest the election. She says the group does election integrity work in multiple states.

http://www.wpsdlocal6.com/2017/07/04/lawsuit-seeks-to-void-georgia-congressional-election-results/

And then the funniest damn thing happened -- the folks at Kennesaw University who were in charge of safeguarding the election results up and erased them!! Purposely. That was so bad that the state's Attorney General, no friend of voters, stepped down from representing the good people who did that in the law suit.

I hope you'll take the time -- and interest -- to explore the matter in more depth. There's a statistician in Kansas who has uncovered "impossible" statistical anomalies in their voting. And, of course, TPTB won't let her proceed (get records to validate her work? testify to state lege? both? Memory fails me on this one).

And didn't we hear during the early election that Clinton in FL and some other state had enough of a margin in absentee ballots alone to ensure that she'd win those states?

On Twitter, @jennycohn1 is an attorney who's good to follow, tho I just discovered her so don't have anything to share yet, really.

Bradblog.com -- go back to his archives during any of the elections. Greg Palast, who has some YouTube videos linked to on his site (see right column, bottom) http://www.gregpalast.com/ . A couple of interest groups that escape me at the moment. Ohio's been a hotbed of election corrupton with voting machines since George W and Ken Blackwell. Lots of info on that out there, tho it's old.

Here's a little more info for you:

Hackers breach dozens of voting machines brought to conference


Voting Machine Security Data security and foreign policy analysts talked about the findings of a DEF CON report on the vulnerabilities of voting machines and other election equipment used throughout the U.S. DEF CON is an annual conference held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada. In this discussion the panelists focused on the broader national security implications following reports of Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Speakers included DEF CON founder Jeff Moss and Douglas Lute, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO.
This event was co-hosted by DEF CON and the Atlantic Council.


Hacker demonstrates how voting machines can be compromised


This just barely scratches the surface. There is a TON of info out there.

[Ms. Toad]

19. I have.

I hope you'll take the time -- and interest -- to explore the matter in more depth. There's a statistician in Kansas who has uncovered "impossible" statistical anomalies in their voting. And, of course, TPTB won't let her proceed (get records to validate her work? testify to state lege? both? Memory fails me on this one).

I am extremely well versed in electronic voting machines, and electronic voter registration, including significant first hand knowledge.

[RandomAccess]

40. Well I've got some good news and some bad news.

You sound quite convinced that there's no there there. The good news: I'm not interested in trying to convince you otherwise.

The bad news: if you truly think elections can't be swung via the electronic machines, then IMO you're simply wrong. Depending on what you might insist on for "proof" or sufficient evidence on the matter, we might not have it. But just as with the #TrumpRussia scandal, the circumstantial evidence alone, over a span of 17 years now, is overwhelming, and AFAIC, for basically the entirety of it, there's simply no reasonable other explanation for the findings.

[TheFrenchRazor]

36. thank you; you have to wonder why some people are so determined to keep the vote counting process

secret.

[questionseverything]

10. no one checked the machines,so we don't really know

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029722275

[Ms. Toad]

22. If you understand how the machines, and the process work,

You don't have to check the machines to know that. It is relatively easy (if you don't count having to do things to the machine that would almost certainly be caught by poll observers) to hack an individual machine, and to play impressive parlor tricks that make it look easy to hack an election. What is virtually impossible, because of the vast numbers of people who would need to be involved in the plot to carry out the steps needed to change the results of an election in a predictable way.

I can give you a more detailed scenario about why it is not practical from a programming standpoint, but I find people who are inclined to believe elections are stolen via the machines generally aren't interested in a reality lesson about programming. As a practical matter, however, you would need the coordination of the 50-100 people in each state who program the elections into the machines at the county level to shift a state-wide race, and thousands to shift a presidential race (the democrat/republican identification is NOT hardwired into the machines - it is added in each county, and to shift from democrat to republican, the hacker would need to know from each local programmer how the party identification was entered (spelling, abbreviation, order)). It is not credible to believe that that many people could be involved in this kind of plot, election after election (as has been alleged for as long as I have been intimately familiar with voting machines - since around 2000 or so), successfully carried it out, and no one has spilled the beans.

[TheFrenchRazor]

35. you have no idea what you are talking about; clearly YOU couldn't hack those machines, but i think

think that someone smarter and more inventive than you could.

[lastlib]

21. Maybe no *individual* votes were flipped, but....

I wouldn't be a bit surprised that on these hackable machines, some vote TOTALS have been altered by someone --GOPee, Russia, (____insert other prime suspect here), corporate hackers..... I think there have been things not on the up-and-up in our electronic voting jungle.

We the people are being attacked on multiple fronts--election hacking/vote manipulation os only one. We have to defend on that front, just as we do on the others you mentioned. This includes the voting roll purges aimed at Dem constituencies, the discriminatory laws (photo ID lalws among them), providing fewer voting machines in Dem-leaning precincts (making it harder for Dems to vote....gerrymandering.... We have to counter-attack on all of these, everywhere our voting rights are attacked.

[Ms. Toad]

23. You would have to change not only the total at the tally location,

but it would need to be changed at each individual machine to match the overall tally.

It would need to be done in county after county - with the cooperation of hundreds of local election officials (for a presidential race), or at least tens (for a statewide race), without anyone spilling the beans election after election for the decade and a half that people have been suggesting that elections were hacked.

I agree as to the attacks on multiple fronts (propaganda, voting roll purges, photo ID laws). Those all need our attention.

[questionseverything]

25. i have done vote total comparisons from county clerks to state results and

many times the totals are off

2 or 3 votes here, 7 votes there...called to dbl check with the clerks about the differences and no one ever thinks it matters...must of been a typo,glitch is typically what I heard

it would take 1 person that controlled the reports at the state level, nothing more

Wisconsin have 3200 precincts (in round numbers) hc lost it by 22,000 votes...that is less than a 7 vote swing per precinct

Michigan had 150 precincts that had more votes than voters so none of those could be counted at all, by mich law

[questionseverything]

27. example

http://bradblog.com/?p=7875

[TheFrenchRazor]

34. ok, i'm not a computer expert, and i don't think you are either, but here is the $64K question,

when has there ever been a detailed, comprehensive, statewide forensic examination of election results, involving putting hands/eyes on every single ballot, and comparing those totals to machine totals, at every step of the way? NEVER; and that is standard practice, so really, the possibility of hacking being discovered and the hacker caught is precisely zero.

[hedda_foil]

42. It's a trivial problem if it's done at the central processor level instead of in voting machines.

Jus flip a few votes from one cqndidate to another. The machines in the precincts aren't Internet connected so unless somebody manages to get to all the machines in a given area and reprogram them one by one with a thumb drive, for instance, hacking individual ymachines is pretty useless. V

[TheFrenchRazor]

37. how are you going to find evidence of machine hacking when it is never investigated? and no one is

is saying that all aspects of election fixing should not be addressed. it's not one or the other.

[Takket]

51. I 100% agreee with you.

But we should have paper ballots that are counted electronically just as a backup for recounts and audits. I think it is silly that if a recount is needed all some precincts can do is ask the machine to spit out the sane number again

[Rene]

2. There must be access to system logs where vote counting is being done....

Must ensure that program processing stays on the same URL. With distributed batch processing it’s VERY easy to switch to another server, in midstream, and execute a same named rogue script on a different server that’s programmed to flip votes......I.e. the exact same 1% difference seen in all the problem states. That’s a programmed result to impact electoral college

[brooklynite]

4. Rogue States like Alabama?

Was the evil vote hacking cabal unable to flip 12,000 votes in a Red State?

[questionseverything]

11. why do you have such a problem with citizens wanting to oversee their own elections?

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029722275

[brooklynite]

13. I have no objection at all...

...but I do object to unfounded conspiracy theories that no candidate, campaign professional or Party leader claims is happening. Republicans steal elections the old fashioned way?

[questionseverything]

15. the op is about getting rid of paperless voting machines

from your point of view it seems you think anyone that thinks there should be something to count is cs?

and btw judge rawl went to court in sc saying his election was rigged

franken took 8 months to be seated to overturn his election which had declared coleman the winner (seems like a rig to me)

even hc supports getting rid of paperless machines...now that it is too late for her

repubs steal in every way so why would they stop short of inserting programs to give pre determined results? especially since they control the companies making those machines and most of the sos offices around the country?

[brooklynite]

18. I didn't respond to the OP; I responded to a comment about vote flipping...

...and I'll respond to yours. Why wouldn't they? Because, in my opinion, it's impractical to keep a conspiracy that large a secret, and the actual EVIDENCE of voter outcomes suggests that it doesn't work.

[questionseverything]

24. post 9 has loads of evidence

in az we even had a drunken confession

riggednomore


you brought up Alabama but they do have paper ballots which should at least limit any flipping....course no recounts are allowed in bama for federal election unless it is with in 1/2 % so no one really KNOWS what the margin was

democrats were in court in bama fighting for transparency in the days leading to the jones election....ballot imagining was halted by the repubs hours before the election

<shrugs>

it isn't just me that is reluctant to trust repub machine owners or repub sos

[brooklynite]

26. Post 9 has loads of allegations...

Did you notice that Jon Ossoff wasn’t claiming he lost because of vote flipping?

[questionseverything]

28. i fully admit most pols treat election integrity like the 3rd rail

And then the funniest damn thing happened -- the folks at Kennesaw University who were in charge of safeguarding the election results up and erased them!! Purposely. That was so bad that the state's Attorney General, no friend of voters, stepped down from representing the good people who did that in the law suit.

///////

so if this wasn't evidence why did they erase it?which btw breaks federal law...22 months and all

even when franken took the 8 months he did to get recounted he didn't make it about a cs

judge rawl did in sc tho

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7894

[TheFrenchRazor]

32. what makes you think there needs to be a large conspiracy? nt

[diva77]

38. regardless of your arguments, computerized voting equipment does NOT meet the burden of proof that

it cannot be hacked. It is NOT transparent; your vote cannot be guaranteed to be cast in private and tabulated in public. That ALONE should be enough to do away with this proprietary, corporate owned equipment (the software is proprietary). Germany banned the equipment for such reasons.

[questionseverything]

46. exactly diva

if we the people are not allowed to oversee the entire election process from beginning to end it is not a legitimate election

[TheFrenchRazor]

33. yep; it really makes you wonder. nt

[Tiggeroshii]

3. Wouldve been nice if they listened to us in 2007 when there was a lot less at stake

[hedda_foil]

43. It would have been nicer if they'd listened in 2003, when they passed out the HAVA dough.

[Tiggeroshii]

44. Wouldve been nice if they listened

Like, at all


...ever

[Wounded Bear]

5. Hopefully not too little too late...

It sounds like a start. At least have paper ballots that can be audited using normal methods might help.

We still have to overcome all of the electioneering going on, too, including gerrymandering, of course.

[SunSeeker]

6. The GOP will never go for it. They know they need to cheat to win. nt

[questionseverything]

12. it isn't just the gop

high level dnc types seem to be against it to

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029722275

[SunSeeker]

14. That doesn't say "high level dnc types" or any Dem is against this bill.

You do realize the DNC is the Democratic Party, right?

All your Bradblog link says (your c-span link is broken) is some DHS folks failed to do a voting machine check back in 2016. I fail to see how that substantiates your "both parties are the same" insinuation.

[questionseverything]

16. i am refering to posters here at du, which if i understand the rules i am not allowed to name

I certainly didn't sat both parties are the same but I do believe we have been infiltrated by some that do not have, we the peoples, best interest at heart

[SunSeeker]

20. I have seen no posters on DU opposing paper ballots.

Nor have I heard of "any high level DNC types" (what the fuck does that even mean?) opposing paper ballot backup.

I am aware of no rule that prevents you from stating, factually, if any Democratic Party/DNC officials oppose paper ballot backup or this bill in particular. So name names or apologize for falsely maligning Democratic Party officials.

[TheFrenchRazor]

31. there are plenty of dems who apparently think the present counting system is fine; if you are not

not aware of that, you have not been paying attention.

[SunSeeker]

39. Not realizing there is a problem is VERY different than opposing a paper ballots bill.

Please tell me what Dems OPPOSE paper ballot backup.

And please try to do it without insulting me. I assure you, I have been paying attention.

[questionseverything]

45. the 1st response and the 4th response in this thread seem to oppose

paper ballots and a tight chain of custody about the reporting

[bluestarone]

47. i'm sure 99% here are for paper ballots

would be interesting to do a poll on this, as i do not know how this would be done. but i'd surely vote on it if you could! Not that good with comp here.

[BlueJac]

17. All voting should be paper ballots hand counted..........

plus plugging all holes in the computer systems. Plus getting rid of the electoral college. In a Democracy the winners has the most votes from the population!

[TheFrenchRazor]

30. this. nt

[Puzzledtraveller]

48. Well, we would have a humongous

battle attempting to change from a republic to a direct democracy if not impossible.

[TheFrenchRazor]

49. hand-counting votes does not require/imply a direct democracy. but yes, many would oppose having

having a secure, verifiable vote count; that is no reason not to push for it.

[TheFrenchRazor]

29. we need all paper ballots, all hand-counted, all the time. nt

[Hekate]

41. KnR

[ck4829]

50. Kick

[mountain grammy]

53. Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan

hacked. I'll never believe anything else.